In general, a semiconductor chip (also called integrated circuit, IC, chip, or microchip) may be processed in semiconductor technology on and/or in a wafer (or a substrate or a carrier), singulated and embedded. A readily processed chip (e.g. an embedded integrated circuit) may be assembled in or on a substrate electrically contacting each other to form a device with a certain functionality, e.g. a smart card or other chip cards.
For the assembly of the chip 1502 (see FIG. 15A and FIG. 15B), a glue material 1504 is applied on the substrate 1506. Then, the chip 1502 is placed face-down into the glue 1504, in other words, the contact bumps 1512 of the chip 1502 facing the contact areas 1516 of the substrate 1506. During assembly of the chip 1502, external mechanical load and heat is applied to the chip 1502 in order to bring the contact bumps 1512 in physical contact with the contact areas 1516 and to cure the glue 1504 to permanently affix the chip 1502 on the substrate 1506. Additional internal mechanical load may arise from the curing process of the glue 1504 (glue cure process) in which the glue 1504 loses volume resulting in a tension force between the chip 1506 and the substrate 1506.
Due to the mechanical load, the chip 1502 may deform resulting in a bending stress applied to the chip 1502, which results from a combination of a shrinkage of the glue 1504 and a bending stress of the chip caused by the pressing the chip 1502 on the substrate 1506 during the glue cure process.
When the chip 1502 is assembled on a conventional substrate 1506, the contact area 1516 with the contact bumps 1512 is supported by a thermode on the rear side of the substrate 1506 during the curing press process. This will cause a sloped orientation of the chip 1502 in the long direction (see FIG. 15B) and a mechanically bending of the chip 1502 in the cross direction (see FIG. 15A). The mechanical stress caused by the assembling procedure may impair the device, e.g. reduce the reliability of the chip, e.g. when assembled in chip cards. For example, the mechanical load may promote crack formation and crack propagation in the chip, resulting in an uncontrolled or undefined behavior, e.g. failure or malfunction, of the chip and the device.